"The results gave women the Republican nominations for the two most
powerful statewide political offices for the first time. Democrats on Tuesday confirmed the obvious, selecting Atty. Gen. Jerry
Brown as their nominee to the governor's office he first held in 1975,
and Barbara Boxer to seek her fourth term in the U.S. Senate. Both had
only nominal competition. Whitman was decisively ahead of state Insurance Commissioner Steve
Poizner from the first returns. Poizner had spent $24 million of his own
money on the race, but the former EBay chief buried his donation with
at least $71 million of her own, a California record. The results set a November match-up between Brown, 72, a career
politician who has been secretary of state, governor and Oakland mayor
before his current post, and Whitman, 53, who volunteered in the 2008
presidential campaign but whose previous political involvement before
that was so tentative that she rarely voted."

Karen Ocamb at LGBT POV wraps the LGBT and LGBT-friendly candidates that triumphed in local races, including the election of the second openly gay Latino to the California Assembly.

"As of midnight, with more than half of the precincts reporting,
Victoria Kolakowski, a transgender administrative law judge and attorney
for over 20 years is leading in her race for Alameda County Superior
Court Judge with 46.11% of the vote, compared to her nearest competitor
with 31.52% of the vote...In Southern California, openly gay Ricardo
Lara, a founding member of HONOR PAC, appears to have won his race in
the 50th Assembly District in the East LA area. He becomes the second
openly gay Latino in the state Legislature in California history...And
in what openly gay Assembly Speaker John A. Perez described as a “huge
win,” pro-gay Democrat Matt Gatto beat National Organization for
Marriage favorite Sunder Ramani who 'used H8 card with the Armenian
community,' which backfired."

California's 50th Assembly District is in Los Angeles County and includes Bell Gardens, Commerce, Lynwood and South Gate. Lara joins Speaker John A. Pérez as the legislature's second openly gay Latino.

Outgoing California Assembly Speaker Karen Bass won the Democratic primary for
California's 33rd congressional seat in Los Angeles, reports the Los Angeles Times. "Bass, termed out of the Assembly and running to succeed Rep. Diane
Watson (D- Los Angeles) in one of only two open congressional seats in
California this year, trouncedpolitical newcomer Felton Newell, a
deputy Los Angeles city attorney, and two other Democrats." Bass has supported LGBT rights and marriage equality and was quite criticalat the racial
hostility directed at the black community by
some gay activists after the passage of Proposition 8.

And in Arkansas, conservative Democratic Sen. Blanche Lincoln survived a run-off from progressive candidate Lt. Gov. Bill Halter. "Lincoln used a down-home pitch and the clout of the Democratic
establishment to turn back Halter, the unions and an anti-incumbent tide
that had already claimed two Senate colleagues. She defined herself as a
sensible moderate in a polarized capital and leaned heavily on
endorsements from President Obama and Bill Clinton."

"'As a 16-year-old, I stood in awe on the floor of this great chamber. I was overcome by the history of this place, where our very laws are debated and created. It never occurred to me that I could one day stand here amongst you as a member, much less as a speaker.' When he was a teenager, Pérez said, the Capitol had little history of welcoming Latinos or openly gay legislators. Pérez is both Latino and gay, he noted, and 'now I have have more certainty about what is really possible in California.' "

Pérez replaces Karen Bass, the state's first black female Assembly Speaker, and was sworn in by California Supreme Court Justice Carlos Moreno, whom you may recall was the sole justice to cast a vote against Proposition 8.

Perez, cousin of Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, will replace current Speaker Karen Bass, who became the first black female speaker. Bass will be forced out of the Legislature by term limits next year.

The nomination now goes before the full Assembly, but the candidate with the most Democratic support usually wins because Democrats hold a majority of seats in the 80-member Assembly.

"Under no circumstances should you think that you can just sideline the Black gay community," Jasmyne Cannick writes. "And go directly to our elected officials or the Black leaders you’ve deemed 'safe' without addressing us, and that means all of us, even the one’s that you don’t like. We’ve already spoken to our electeds on this issue and made it clear that it’s not going down. We may not give them the money that you do, but we live in their districts and actually vote for them ... whereas most of you do not."

Cannick and a number of black activists in California, straight and gay, plan a series of town hall meetings in Los Angeles, Oakland and San Diego to discuss homophobia, gay rights, and to slowly bring the community over the marriage. Cannick has some not-so-subtle advice for the No on 8 activists: Stay sat home and let "the Black community have a discussion about this among themselves without the interference of outsiders, who in my opinion have only made the issue worse and only aided in the invisibility of Black gays."

Look, we have disagreed with Jasmyne on a number of issues, including marriage, but when she's right she is right. The No on 8 campaign sidelined the black community and black gay community. Much of the media and the gay e-telligentsia has blamed us for what was a top-down, focus-grouped, poorly executed campaign. It's time to allow the community to heal.